Tuesday 24 July 2012 08.08 EDT
First published on Tuesday 24 July 2012 08.08 EDT

A few months ago in this column, I put forward the idea that, after nearly a century of global appeal, mainstream films with strong American settings were becoming regional cinema again, principally for the home market. Hollywood, currently busy evolving other means of borderless travel, can live with that – but the shift isn't such a good sign for American culture as a whole. But if the outside world doesn't see the glamour any more, then maybe it's a chance for the US to dig back into the grit again – revitalise shared values and iconic figures that are at its core.

One man arguably benefiting from this effect is Theodor Seuss Geisel. It's striking how strongly adaptations of the anapaestically adroit Doctor's work have performed in the US as opposed to the rest of the planet – like this year's environmental fable The Lorax, which has so far taken 68.8% of its $310.8m (£200.5m) domestically. It's not as though Dr Seuss is unknown, especially in the rest of the English-speaking world, but the US bias among the other recent portovers is hefty: 2000's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (75.3% US), 2003's The Cat in the Hat (75.5%) and 2008's Horton Hears a Who! (52% – not so impressive, but still significant when you consider that the Ice Age films, by the same team, took as little as 16%). The Grinch and Horton both placed in the top 10 of the American charts in their respective years, too.

Dr Seuss's folksy twang, locked into the anapaestic tetrameter that became his calling card, and rat-a-tat, rat-a-ratted into the heads of toddlers from Miami to Minneapolis, might seem to have something quintessentially Yankee about it. But just as he was part of a larger community of nonsense versemongers, including Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, there's no reason why the recent wave of films shouldn't have also whipped up the same kind of lolloping delirium worldwide.

Unwavering scansion hasn't exactly been at the heart of the adaptations (90 minutes of unadulterated Seuss, instead of 10 minutes' bedtime reading, might prove an anapaestic overload), and I suspect more practical factors explain the Doctor's US stranglehold. He's been at the centre of literacy efforts in the country since 1998 – the annual Read Across America Day takes place on or near what would have been his birthday (he died in 1991) on 2 March. So there's a massive grassroots marketing campaign already in place – and the Seuss estate has stepped up the pace and the purposefulness of the adaptation treadmill over the last decade. The personal branding is front and centre these days: the full title is Dr Seuss's Horton Hears a Who!, and ditto for Dr Seuss's The Lorax.

That's the kind of solid community backing that's nearly impossible to replicate on an international scale. The easier-going CGI versions, skating along on a frosted icing of pop-culture references, seem to be breaking through more easily to the rest of the world than the frankly unsettling live-action films of 10 years ago, with, to quote The Cat in the Hat, their "weird hairy man" look. How comfortable Dr Seuss would have been with the upswing in operations is another thing: the film of The Lorax has retained his anti-consumerist message, but gained 70 product-placement partners, which seems to defeat the object. But those kinds of dangers can only grow the further you leave your point of origin behind.

• Next week's After Hollywood will look at the biggest Chinese box-office hit of 2012. Meanwhile, what global box-office stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below.